“Kehinde” by Buchi Emecheta  

Emecheta Buchi. Kehincde. London: Heinmann, 1994. (African Writer's series)  

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

BUCHI EMECHETA was born in Lagos in Nigeria. Her father a railway worker, died when she was very young. At the age of ten she won a scholarship to the Methodist Girls’ High School, but by the time she was seventeen she had left school, married and had a child. She accompanied her husband to London where he was a student. Aged 22, she finally left him, and took an honours degree in sociology while supporting her five children and writing early in the mornings. Her first book, In the Ditch, detailed her experience as a poor single parent in London.

SUMMARY

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Kehinde is a short story about a woman named Kehinde and her husband, Albert who have always intended to leave England and return to Nigeria. However when the opportunity arises, Kehinde realises she is reluctant to leave London and the independence she has enjoyed there. On the other hand, her husband, Albert, longing for the prosperity and status that will be his in Nigeria, is determined not to be thwarted in his plans. He thinks that his wife should obey him, like a good Nigerian woman should and so forces her to make terrible choices (****SPOILER one of which is to abort their unborn baby). Kehinde, plagued with guilt, is led onto an unexpected path by the spirit of her dead twin.     

       

CHARACTERS

Kehinde

Is the protagonist, who the novel is named after. She is a successful Bank manager who is the bread winner in the home. She is conscious of the freedom women have in England, compared to Nigeria and so doesn’t want to leave. However she is also aware of her role as a Nigerian wife, a wife who is required to obey her husband, as a result she is torn between her satisfaction of her life as a working woman, who is her husband’s equal and her obligations as a Nigerian woman, which deems her to be subject to him.

Albert

Kehinde’s husband, who is dissatisfied with his role as a store manager in a supermarket. He is also dissatisfied with his wife’s higher occupation, earnings and the Western culture which deems that he treats his wife as his equal, as a result he longs for the status and patriarchal influence of Nigerian culture, which he feels he is entitled to. 

***Spoiler when he goes back to Nigeria he marries a younger woman who gives him another son- something which devastates Kehinde who is not told until she arrives in Nigeria.

Joshua

Kehinde’s son who has adopted western ways but when is taken to Nigeria, to be educated; he assumes the same patriarchal nature of his father. When he returns back to England he demands that his mother turn out all her lodgers and give up her house to him.

Bimpe

Kehinde’s daughter who is also taken back to Nigeria and decides to stay.

Mr Gibson

Mr Gibson is Kehinde’s, young Caribbean lodger who later becomes her lover. 

THEMES

Themes 1:  Generational tensions/ Feminism/ Masculinity/ Patriarchy

Emechta’s Kehinde, Kehinde relishes the freedom she has as a woman living in Britain, a freedom she knows she would not have had in Nigeria. Emecheta makes us very aware of this when she writes, “Kehinde was aware that she could talk to her husband less formally than women like her sister, Ifeyinwa, who were in more traditional marriages. She related to Albert as a friend, a compatriot, a confidant.” (page 6) However, with her son Joshua newly returned from Nigeria with strong patriarchal values, Kehinde’s freedoms as a woman are challenged as Joshua sees the house as his natural right as a man.  However, Kehinde is unwilling to allow her son to dominate her. She asserts: “This is my house.” (137) Despite Buchi Emecheta’s rejection of the Feminist label in her essay "Feminism with a Small f!" The feminist sentiments in the Kehinde are evident throughout the text. The last few pages of the novel emerge as a power- play between mother and son. In fact the last chapter, where Kehinde and her son fight for dominance over the house is aptly named “The Rebel”, as Kehinde is rebelling against the male- dominated Nigerian culture, which is embodied in her son.

Question: How important is the theme of generational tensions in the text? In what ways does Emecheta’s exploration of this theme work to illuminate the changing dynamics of postcolonial experience?

 Theme 2: Culture Clashes/ Identity  

When Kehinde refuses to give Joshua her house, he is stumped: “he had expected her to be the ideal Ibusa village mother but she lived in London, not the village…” (138) It is at this moment that Joshua experiences a ‘cultural clash’; recently returned from a patriarchal Nigeria, he had expected his mother to roll over and bow to his demands like the typical Nigerian woman. However Kehinde, has adopted a hybrid identity, this is symbolized by Emecheta through Kehinde’s story of her twin or ‘Taiwo’ (141). We learn Kehinde’s twin died at birth, however throughout the story, the voice of Kehinde’s taiwo guides her by rebelling against certain things that she objects to. For example when Kehinde learns that her husband has entered into a polygamous marriage in Nigeria and also when she learns that he has had another child.

Since the voice rebels against things that are typical in Nigerian culture but seen as illegal or wrong in Britain, it could be argued that the voice is representation of Kehinde’s ‘western’ side. At the end of the story Kehinde says to her taiwo, “‘Now we are one.’” (141) This line shows us that Kehinde is no longer torn between Nigerian culture or  British culture but finds an in-between identity; which is a mixture of Nigerian and British, which makes her feel comfortable.   

Further Reading

Brown-Guillory, Elizabeth. Middle Passages and the Healing Place of History: Migration and Identity in Black Women’s Literature. Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 2006.

Gardner, Susan. “Culture Clashes, Changes: A Love Story by Ama Ata Aidoo: Kehinde by Buchi Emecheta” The Women’s Review of Books, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Nov. 1994) pp. 22- 23.   

Knepper, Wendy. Postcolonial Literature. London: York Press, 2011. 

Needham, Anuradha Dingwaney. Using the Master's Tools: Resistance and the Literature of the African and South-Asian Diasporas. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000.

Oronjo Ogunyemi, Chirwenye. Africa Wo/man Palava: The Nigerian Novel. Chicago: The University of Chicago, 1996.

 

Umeh, Marie. Emerging Perspectives on Buchi Emecheta. Michigan: African World Press, 1996.

Werlock, Abby H. P. British Women Writing Fiction. Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 2000.